Attack Doll 5: The End of Lily Lee

by Douglas A. Taylor

Chapter 13

 

  I quickly gave Padma a hand up; the scorpion monster was rapidly heading her way. The two of us hurriedly backed away. Mike began circling around to one side.

  "Be careful," Padma warned me as we watched the tip of the scorpion's tail begin to change from the dull red to a pale blue. "The last time it did that, it fired some sort of energy blast at me."

  "Indigo, leave this chap to Blue and me," Mike said quietly. Our communications must have been working normally, at least, because he spoke Prime-to-Prime, without the usual voice distortion. "You've a job to do, and I expect you to do it."

  Padma protested, "Red, I don't always want to be running away!"

  The tip of the scorpion's tail had begun flickering now. I tensed, expecting that it would soon shoot at us. I wasn't disappointed; with a zapping sound, a bolt of bright blue energy headed my way. I dived to one side, rolling along the grass. The beam missed me, but not by much.

  "You all right, Blue?"

  I tried to quiet my racing heart. "Just barely, Red," I said. "Indigo may not be the only one with a short haircut after today. That one was too close!"

  "Right," Mike said. "I was hoping to jump in for a close attack, but perhaps I'd better take over as the human target. Indigo, why are you still here?"

  "I . . ." Padma began. "I wanted to make sure that Blue was all right."

  "He's fine," Mike said brusquely. "Now scoot!"

  "Scoot?" Padma sounded puzzled.

  "Run. Go. Now! I promise you, you will see plenty of action today, but right now I need to know how far this damping field extends!"

  I heard her take a deep breath. "All right, Red. I'm going; you can count on me." She began jogging away from us.

  "Why can they not take orders?" he muttered to himself. He began to back away from the monster. "Blue, the plan now is for me to distract it and draw its fire while you get close enough to -- hang on! Stop that!" The scorpion had scuttled to one side and seemed to be taking aim at Padma's running form.

  Mike darted around to the front of the creature, jumping up and down and waving his arms. "Hey there, you poxy bastard! Focus on me, why don't you?"

  His antics had the desired effect. The scorpion's aim shifted to him, and it remained on him as he began dancing back towards the line of trees that seemed to mark the edge of the park. "Aren't you going the wrong way, Red?" I called after him. "Don't you want us to follow Indigo?"

  "We've still got to pick up the frog," he called back.

  "Oh, right." The tip of the scorpion's tail began to glow light blue again. "Uh, I think he's getting ready to fire, Red," I warned him.

  "Is that what it looks like when he's getting ready?" he asked. "The blue tip?"

  "That's right." As if to punctuate my remark, the scorpion sent a blue blast of energy straight toward him.

  Now, I know that Mike's reflexes have to be among the fastest on the planet, even without his force shield jazzing them up. I have seen him do all kinds of tricks that no ordinary human ought to be able to do; in a reaction-time contest, he would give a mongoose a run for its money, and those critters routinely dodge striking cobras.

  But I swear, during that whole run towards and then into the park, he must have been prescient. There was no other way he could have dodged as many energy blasts as he did. Every time the scorpion fired, I thought, this was it, he was finally going to get zapped. But then the smoke would clear and I would look, and Mike would be yards away, waving his arms and taunting.

  Not that I was just standing around watching. I wasn't. Mostly, I was looking for a way to jump onto the back of the rapidly-moving giant scorpion and then take control of its blaster-tail. It wasn't easy, especially without the added speed, strength, and agility afforded me by my force shield. (And if you think maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough, all I can say is . . . try it yourself sometime on your own eight-foot-tall scorpion. You'll see how tough it really is.)

  When we finally passed through the line of trees, though, ol' Scorpie finally slowed down enough for me to hop aboard. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure he even noticed me, so focused was he on on Mike. The tip of his tail was turning light blue again, and it was gradually moving down and forward, the way it had been doing whenever he was aiming. "I'm going to grab his tail," I warned Red. "I'll try to pull it off to the monster's right, so dodge accordingly."

  Without waiting for a reply, I leaped up and grabbed hold of the barbed tail. I must have startled the monster, because he fired almost immediately, long before he normally would have. I also spoiled his aim; the blast went way low. If it gone much lower, in fact, Scorpie would have blown his own head off.

  So, the first part of our plan had gone pretty well, at least. Now came the hard part -- hanging on. It turns out that scorpion tails -- or at least Enclave scorpion tails -- are a lot stronger that I had thought. Who knew?

  I'm sure it was a great source of amusement for Mike to see me holding on to Scorpie's tail for dear life as it whipped it back and forth, trying to shake me off. I thought I heard some snorts of suppressed laughter coming from his direction, in fact. Still, he did run over right away and jump onto the monster's back, and our combined weight managed to pull the tail down to about chest level.

  "This is all well and good," I commented, breathing heavily from the exertion, wrapping my arms around the tail to help secure it, "but how do we get him to start moving again?"

  Indeed, now that Mike wasn't out in front egging it on, the scorpion had slowed to a stop. Mike tried tugging the tail forward, but the scorpion still refused to budge.

  The giant frog chose this moment to take another of its huge leaps; I could hear its black body crashing through the upper branches of the nearby trees. The resulting mini-earthquake as he landed nearly knocked us from our perch, but we hung onto the tail grimly. Mike angled the barbed tip over to one side. "There's where the sound came from," he said.

  We must have been making Scorpie pretty mad, because his tail was already glowing light blue again. When he let loose with his blast a bit later, a couple of trees blew apart, and from beyond them we heard an angry bellow.

  "Bullseye!" Mike shouted. "That'll get his attention." In that same instant, we heard the sounds of more crashing, and several additional trees fell over, pushed aside by the huge black frog that was now heading straight for us.

  Had I just been worrying that we couldn't get the scorpion to move? It was moving now, and plenty fast -- but in the wrong direction. Instead of heading back the way it had come, towards the nearest edge of the boundary, it began scuttling forward towards the center of the park.

  "Any ideas how we steer this thing?" I shouted.

  "None." He laughed with pure delight. "But I can see why you like riding monsters, Blue. This is grouse!"

  And it was -- right up until the scorpion wandered a little too close to an overhanging tree. Mike saw the branch and ducked with plenty of time to spare. My own reaction wasn't quite so quick, and the tree caught me across the shoulder, sending me tumbling to the ground. By the time I had picked myself up, Scorpie was already scuttling down the path away from me. I had to throw myself to one side to avoid being trampled by the angry black frog that came thundering past, bellowing angrily.

  "I'm all right, Red," I called after Mike's retreating form. "Keep on going; I'll catch up."

  Soon I was by myself, walking down the now-cracked cement pathway through the center of the park. I considered my options. I could follow in Mike's wake, or I could join Padma, hanging around outside the damping-field boundary and waiting for her force shield to recharge. Or I could have Wizzit send me over to where Trina and the others were probably still figuring out what to do about the Gila monster. "Let's see, how can I help?" I muttered to myself.

  "I'm glad you asked that, Blue," came Wizzit's voice abruptly. "There's something I would li
ke one of you Primes to investigate, and you're the handiest one."

  That pricked up my ears. Wizzit offers us a lot of advice during our battles, but he hardly ever tells us what to do. I guess he figures that making decisions during a fight is one of the reasons he keeps us around. "Uh, sure, Wizzit. What gives?"

  "I now have enough data points from Indigo's efforts to extrapolate the complete extent of the damping field with reasonable certainty," he explained. "Probability is eighty-seven percent that it is more-or-less perfectly circular in shape."

  "Well, that makes sense, I guess."

  "It would make sense if there were a single-point generator of the field," he replied. I think he was agreeing with me. "If, say, it were generated by two mutually-dependent generators, the shape could easily be elliptical or even hyperbolic. With more generators and varying degrees of dependency, other, even stranger shapes are possible."

  "So you're telling me that there's probably just one thing or person or machine that's creating this field?" I asked.

  "Affirmative. Of course, it's possible that there is a perfectly circular ring of generators, but given the pattern under which the field strength drops off, I doubt it."

  "And this generator is located at the center of the circle?"

  "That's very likely the case."

  "Okay," I said. "Where is the center?"

  "Turn so that you're facing ten o-clock." I did so, which pointed me directly toward the mini-pyramid I had seen earlier. "The center of the damping field is approximately twenty-two yards in front of you."

  "Is anyone there?"

  "I cannot tell. The damping field is hindering my sensors' ability to detect alien life forms."

  "All right," I said. "Here goes."

  I set off walking. Now, I was in marching band in high school, and I can still sort of do the eight-steps-to-five-yards stride that I learned there. I counted off exactly twenty-five such steps, which took me to the very base of a stairway leading to the top of the pyramid; it looked as though the remaining ten or so steps would take me to the very top.

  This was not an Egyptian-style pyramid. The apex was a squarish structure about six feet by six feet with moderately high walls that looked like castle walls; they had a small version of that tooth-and-gap appearance where archers inside the castle would hide behind one of the teeth and shoot through the gaps. At the bottom of the structure on each of the four sides were what appeared to be very small doorways. I looked inside one. Nothing. That meant that the generator was probably on whatever sort of roof was being hidden by the walls.

  I'm not really a climber, but I managed to find some hand- and foot-holds and scramble up one wall. Then I swung my legs over and dropped inside. And there, in the exact center of the pyramid, sat the very person I suddenly realized that I had been expecting to see here all along.

  "Hello, Lily," I said.